About Adblock Plus

What is Adblock Plus?

Adblock Plus blocks annoying ads on the web. It can block other things, like tracking, as well. With more than 50 million users, it is the world's most popular browser extension.
Adblock Plus is an open source project created by Wladimir Palant in 2006. Eyeo was founded in 2011 by Wladimir Palant and Till Faida to make its development sustainable.

How does Adblock Plus work?

Adblock Plus itself has no functionality, in the sense that it does not block anything until it is "told" what to do by its filter lists. These filter lists are essentially an extensive set of rules, which tell Adblock Plus which elements of websites to block. Besides blocking advertisements, filter lists can also be used to block tracking and malware.

What are Acceptable Ads?

Adblock Plus exists to save its users from annoying ads. However, we don't think that all ads are bad, and we are fully aware that website owners need them to survive. Therefore, we have established strict criteria to identify Acceptable Ads: unobtrusive ones that don't need to be blocked. Websites that are willing to comply with these criteria can apply to have their ads added to the Acceptable Ads exception list, which will unblock them for most users. Note that if you don't want to see any ads, you will always be able to opt out of this.

How do we make money?

We are being paid by some larger properties that serve non-intrusive advertisements that want to participate in the Acceptable Ads initiative.

Whitelisting is free for all small and medium-sized websites and blogs. However, managing this list requires significant effort on our side and this task cannot be completely taken over by volunteers as it happens with common filter lists.

Note that we will never whitelist any ads that don't meet these criteria. There is no way to buy a spot in the whitelist. Also note that whitelisting is free for small- and medium-sized websites.

In addition, we received startup capital from our investors, like Tim Schumacher, who believe in Acceptable Ads and want to see the concept succeed.

Why do we need money?

Eyeo GmbH, the company behind Adblock Plus, was founded to change the world of online advertising. This is not something a single person can do as a hobby.

We need to grow the user base of Adblock Plus and bring it to new platforms to get publishers interested in Acceptable Ads. Adblock Plus, originally only available for Firefox, is now available on Chrome, Android, Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari. We also manage the infrastructure used to deliver EasyList, the most popular ad-blocking list which is also used by other adblockers.

Furthermore, we need to review many Acceptable Ads applications and create the appropriate whitelisting filters. Also, we need to proactively approach publishers and ad networks about creating Acceptable Ads.

But, Eyeo is not only about Adblock Plus and Acceptable Ads. Our mission is to make the web better, and we intend to do so by creating new ways for publishers to earn money from their content without alienating their users.

Does Adblock Plus collect any user data?

We do not specifically collect any user data, and most of your data (e.g. what websites you visit) is never sent to our servers to begin with. Please see our Privacy Policy for all the details.